Parolee fighting corrections department for family union

Nathan Walker married his wife, Jennifer, in June in the church where they had met months earlier.

There was a baby on the way and Walker, 22, was preparing to be a father and a husband.

"I always had kind of held myself to an old-school standard, so it was kind of a given that at some point I was going to marry her," Walker said.

Walker would like to spend Christmas at home with his wife and newborn son, Noah, as well as his 5-year-old stepson. Instead he is living in a halfway house a few miles away.

A Sedgwick County parolee, Walker has started a website dedicated to fighting the order from the Department of Corrections’ Prisoner Review Board that prevents him from living with his wife and children.

Walker started his "Nate's Fight" site (http://natesfight.yolasite.com/) with the stated mission "to educate the people of Kansas on sex crime laws and how they can affect our children and families in a negative way."

Walker was convicted of unlawful voluntary sexual relations for having consensual sex with a 15-year-old when he was 18 and both were in high school. He said that as part of the terms of his parole, he is barred from having contact with most children, including his month-old son, Noah, even though the Department of Corrections' own mental health evaluation determined that he isn’t a pedophile.

Consequently, he will miss his child’s first Christmas.

"It’s kind of devastating," Walker said. "It breaks my heart. My own father wasn’t around very much. He was very abusive, and my mother left him when I was 2 or 3. I know what it’s like for a kid whose father isn’t around."

Jeremy Barclay, spokesman for the Department of Corrections, confirmed via email that the terms of Walker’s parole include no contact with minor children except with advance permission from his parole officer and consultation with the state’s sex offender treatment program.

"The Kansas Department of Corrections is committed to public safety of all Kansans through the enforcement of parole conditions," Barclay said. "Parolee Nathan Walker is no exception to these rules and conditions. Through our dedicated parole officers and agency staff, we look forward to helping parolee Nathan Walker re-enter society as best we can and depend on his compliance with the rules established for his successful re-entry to society."

"It’s, in my opinion, a bad law," Stang said. "They need to give prosecutors some discretion with close-aged people. A lot of times you’re dealing with kids and kids."

Stang said the law as written now is quite rigid.

"If you’re under 16 in the state of Kansas you cannot consent to sex," Stang said. "Is there a difference between that situation and some would say a 40-year-old messing with a 15-year-old? Yeah, I think there’s a significant difference if you look at it."

Walker has been found in violation of his parole order once, when he got into an argument with a staff member at a previous sheltered living facility and was kicked out. He moved in with his wife, who was pregnant at the time, and stepson.

"I kind of had a ‘freakout moment,’ " Walker said. "I didn't have any place else to go."

Walker works at a tortilla factory.

He said the Department of Corrections since has found him shelter in another halfway house, this one for recovering alcoholics. Walker said he has been sober for nearly four years.

That milestone roughly coincides with his conviction for having sex with the 15-year-old. Walker said the girl told her cousin about the encounter. The cousin told the girl’s parents, who called police.

Walker was sentenced to 10 months, plus another 26 months for failing to register as a sex offender for a crime he committed as a juvenile. According to Walker, when he was 13, he was found guilty of a sex offense after "playing doctor" with a girl the same age. His registry offense, he said, came after he notified the county he moved to that he was on a juvenile offender registry but failed to notify his previous county that he had left.

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